Description
The extensions you relied on disappeared after an update — not because their authors quit, but because the browser removed the old add-on interface entirely, leaving a replacement so restricted that the useful ones could not be rebuilt. The toolbar is laid out for you, and moving an interface element is not on offer. Pale Moon took the other road: it is an independent fork of early Firefox code with its own Goanna rendering engine, and it still runs complete XUL/XPCOM extensions and full legacy themes.
It is not Firefox with a different skin but a browser that branched off that line and has been developed separately for more than a decade. The tradeoff is slower movement on the newest web standards; what you get back is an interface you can rearrange almost anywhere, old extensions that still work, and an environment with no telemetry or sponsored recommendations. Windows, Linux and macOS, open source.
Full add-on interface: the capable old XUL/XPCOM extension system is still supported, so add-ons that need to reach deep into the interface and behavior keep working instead of being confined to a restricted API.
Goanna rendering engine: a separately maintained engine branch that does not follow upstream architectural churn, so the browser's behavior and interface are not reset by someone else's redesign.
Rearrangeable interface: toolbars, button placement and the status bar are yours to arrange, and complete legacy themes install normally.
No telemetry or recommendations: no built-in usage reporting, sponsored tiles or news feed — a new tab is just a new tab.
Room for older hardware: system and CPU instruction-set requirements are looser than mainstream browsers, so it still installs and runs on modest or older machines.
Cross-platform and open source: Windows, Linux and macOS builds with published source, plus a portable build that runs from a folder without touching the registry.
Its own add-ons site: the project maintains its own extension and theme directory for this interface rather than depending on an upstream store.
It is not Firefox with a different skin but a browser that branched off that line and has been developed separately for more than a decade. The tradeoff is slower movement on the newest web standards; what you get back is an interface you can rearrange almost anywhere, old extensions that still work, and an environment with no telemetry or sponsored recommendations. Windows, Linux and macOS, open source.
Features
Full add-on interface: the capable old XUL/XPCOM extension system is still supported, so add-ons that need to reach deep into the interface and behavior keep working instead of being confined to a restricted API.
Goanna rendering engine: a separately maintained engine branch that does not follow upstream architectural churn, so the browser's behavior and interface are not reset by someone else's redesign.
Rearrangeable interface: toolbars, button placement and the status bar are yours to arrange, and complete legacy themes install normally.
No telemetry or recommendations: no built-in usage reporting, sponsored tiles or news feed — a new tab is just a new tab.
Room for older hardware: system and CPU instruction-set requirements are looser than mainstream browsers, so it still installs and runs on modest or older machines.
Cross-platform and open source: Windows, Linux and macOS builds with published source, plus a portable build that runs from a folder without touching the registry.
Its own add-ons site: the project maintains its own extension and theme directory for this interface rather than depending on an upstream store.
